There are currently approximately 200 million people employed in the fishery industrial sector worldwide. The importance of the fishery industry to their livelihood can be said as central to livelihood and food security. Fisheries products account for 15.3% of total animal protein consumed by people. The annual yield of fisheries products had been rising for every country, although it is predictable that such increasing yield might be responsible for deteriorating amount of marine fishes in our oceans due to overfishing by irresponsible fisherman.
However, with the ever-increasing global demand for fisheries products, the long term future of the marine life and even the fishery industrial sector would be threatened. Marine fisheries should be managed in order to protect the marine life cycle, marine ecosystem, and the impact of non-marine life.
Marine fisheries should be managed to prevent the collapse of the population of marine life.
In order to satisfy the demand for fisheries products in the market, people often commit to overfishing which depletes a fishery by catching too much adult fish that not enough remain to breed and replenish population. The acting of overfishing is really unhealthy as it would threaten the marine population to extinction.
According to Science, fisheries activity brings a direct effect on the population depletion of marine life. If there is an area full of sardines where no one discovered it, and one day, there is one fisherman find it. He starts fishing there and profits a lot. Soon, other fishermen will come and begin fishing for the sardines. This in turn would deplete the populations of sardines and have direct effects in the size of the sardines caught. Classic examples of population collapse caused by overfishing can be seen in sardine stocks off California and Japan in the late 1940s and the anchovy off Peru and Chile in 1972.
According to the studies conducted by Morato et al. (2006), the population of the fishes decrease from years to years. People tend to catch the fishes from the sea into deeper depth every few years and this shows that the reducing of population of fishes in the sea because of the lack of management in fisheries.
By managing the area where fishermen can carry out fisheries, and also limit the size, sex and type of fishes they can catch, this would be helpful in preventing the population collapse of marine organisms. Even if there was once a great yield of fisheries products, if not managed properly by local fisheries, would result in a huge decrease in fish population in the near future.
Marine fisheries should be managed to minimize the impact on marine ecosystem.
Marine fisheries can also affect the marine ecosystem. Commercial fishing not only polluted the marine ecosystem, but also alters the original population makeup of the area thus affecting the local food web system. Some irresponsible fishermen might even throw wastes like plastic bags and other rubbishes into the sea. When fishes consume these rubbishes, their life might be in danger because of the toxicity of the waste. Human wastes such as urine are also released into the sea and this might change the acidicity of the sea thus lowering the survival rates of the sea animals. Primary sources of disturbances by fisheries to ecosystem are pollution, outbreaks of disease, and climate changes. Besides, the possibility of oil leakage from tankers might become of a critical damage to the marine environment. The leaked oil will prevent sunlight pass through the water surface of the sea and also prevent the oxygen pass through the sea, this will halt the process of photosynthesis of the seaweeds and that might cause the shortage of oxygen in the sea. Not only that the wastes and leaked oil that will change the marine ecosystem, but fishery itself is a source of trouble for marine ecosystem too.
Organisms that contributed critical structural habitat in the sea are killed by the fisheries activities such as dredging, trawling, long-hauling and igniting explosives. Besides, fisheries destruct the cold-water coral and sea grass meadows. The loss of these organisms and habitat would in turn affect the undersea temperature and would in a loss of natural habitat for a lot of marine life. Without a natural environment to hide from predators, the amount of preys will eventually decrease. Besides, some fishes actually feed on sea grass, if the amount of sea grass decrease, the competition among these fishes will increase and also will lead to the population collapse. The changing of the ecosystem environment in the sea will affect other marine living organisms also. Fisheries will make the sea environment more unstable to live in and many organisms will eventually die because they are not adaptable to the changing environment.
Marine fisheries should be managed to prevent the food chain in marine ecosystem being disrupted
Commercial fishing will also cause disruption to the marine food webs. By catching specific type of fishes, the food for other marine organism might be caught by people and they cannot find any other food to substitute the caught one, then eventually the amount of these organisms will reduced and then extinct.
Besides, by catching the fishes, these fishes may appear to be predator to other marine organisms. Without these predatory fishes, the preys will grow exponentially. There will be a huge change in marine food webs and the competition among these organisms will eventually increase and in the end lead to the shortage of food supply as there is a lack of existing number of predator.
Besides, during the fisheries, there are always by-catch incidents of other marine organisms of no significant value. For example, sea-turtles are always the by-catch product because of the result of turtles attempting to swallow bait or becoming entangled in gear. They are either being killed or exported to other countries. Otherwise, these by-catch products might be released to another area. Such actions will cause invasion of new species to certain area. The by-catching of these marine lives will affect the food webs also. Marine fisheries should be managed and be regulated that every fishermen follow the rules and regulation set for the conservation of fishes closely and will only catch specific fishes while releasing any other by-catch marine life which are not in demand.
Marine fisheries should be managed to prevent the impact on natural consumers of marine fishes.
Many creatures depend on the marine fishes for survival and this includes human ourselves. If there is no appropriate marine fisheries management, fisheries will be uncontrollable and will cause the declining population of the fishes. This will endanger the population of other species within the same food web, such as seabirds and marine mammals.
As a human, if there is no more food supply at one place, people will tend to migrate to other places to find a better habitat with a higher chance of survival. Same thing applies for animals. When they do not have efficient food supply, they will tend to move to other habitats and compete with creatures in other habitats to get food supply. This will not only affect the ecosystem and also food webs at other places, and also endangers the population of other species. Botsford et. al. (1997) stated that aggressive seabirds disrupt and alter the broader seabird community through next predation and aggression and this showed that how dangerous if these creatures are affected by the fisheries.
Marine fisheries management is necessary.
Without appropriate or sufficient management of marine fisheries, the population of fishes will collapse which eventually will lead to extinction. Besides, marine ecosystem will be affected and this will affected other marine and non-marine organisms too. Marine fisheries should be managed in the best ways according to each geographical location. The statistics collected by scientists are always the legal fisheries activities, but there is still a lot of illegal fishing conducting elsewhere. So it is equally important to control and prohibit illegal fishing by enforcing the patrol of navy police. It is not only marine fisheries that need to be managed, but it is suggested that inland fisheries are also equally important compared to marine fisheries.
References
- Bell, U. (2004), Overfishing, UN Chronicle, Jun-Aug 2004, 41, 2, Academic Research Library.
- Botsford, L. W., Castilla, J. C., and Peterson, C.H. (1997), “The Management of Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems”, SCIENCE, vol. 277, pp. 509 – 515
- Jackson, J.B.C., Kirby M.X., Berger, W.H., Bjorndal, K.A., Botsford, L.W., Bourque, B.J., Bradbury, R.H., Cooke, R., Erlandson, J., Estes, J.A., Hughes, T.P., Kidwell, S., Lange, C.B., Lenihan, H.S., Pandol, J.M., Peterson, C.H., Steneck, R.S., Tegner, M.J. and Warner R.R. (2001), “Historical Overfishing and the recent collapse of Coastal Ecosystems”, Science, vol 793, 27 July, pp. 629-638.
- Lewison, R.L., Freeman S.A. and Crowder L.B. (2004), “Quantifying the effects of fisheries on threatened species: the impact of pelagic longlines on loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles”, Ecology Letter, 7, pp. 221-231, Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.
- Morato, T., Watson, R., Pitcher, T.J., and Pauly, D. (2006), “Fishing down the deep”, Fish and Fisheries, 7, pp. 24-34.